Just as it was with Cee, it was impossible to explain to them that the proliferating forces of history, conflicting, joining, altering each other's paths, had shown that the human race was not yet free of violence, that the laws, the authorities, the many ways that had tried in the past to end it, had overlooked the stark fact that it was something that must be dealt with inside each individual, herself or himself. And to deal with it, the individual had to understand it.
So he sang on, letting the verses of the ballad recount its version of that dark and bitter encounter between two armies of men, whose only excuse for fighting each other was that they wished to fight, in a place and at a time where neither land, nor anything else but who should win, was at stake.
He sang about how the Earl Douglas, son of the king of Scotland, having ravaged along the border, came at last to Newcastle, the home of Percy, the English Earl of Northumberland. It had been another Percy - called Hotspur - who had been immortalized as a character in one of the plays by Shakespeare.
At Newcastle, the Scottish force had been stopped. For all their numbers, they had had no way to take the fortification that the castle represented. But there was skirmishing just outside it...
...But o how pale his lady looked,
Frae off the castle wall,
When down before the Scottish spear
She saw brave Percy fall...
...And some symbol - a pennon, a sword, something of symbolic value - was taken from the English to be carried back into Scotland as a trophy, something the Percy swore should not happen. So an appointment was made for the two forces to meet at Otterburn, some distance away in the Cheviot hills, where the Scots would wait for the English....
...they lighted high on Otterburn,
Upon the bent so brown
They lighted high on Otterburn,
And threw their pallions down ...
And settled in for the night.
But during the deepest hours of darkness, an alarm was sounded to the young Earl Douglas.
... but up then spake a little page,
Before the break of the dawn.
O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord,
For Percy's hard at hand!
'Ye lie, ye lie, ye loud liar,
Sae loud I hear ye lie!
The Percy hadna men yestereen
To dight my men and me ...
There was a small noise during a second's pause of the guitar's ringing and Hal's voice. The door to the office was opened from the outside as someone came in. But, caught up in recalling the lines of the song, Hal did not look to see who it was. For the next verse was one that had rung, echoed and re-echoed down the years, not only in his own ears but those of many other writers and poets...
... but I have seen a dreary dream,
Beyond the isle of Skye,
I saw a dead man won the fight,
And I think that man was I-
He broke off abruptly, and the vibrations of the guitar strings faded away into the silence of the room. For the person who had entered stood cloaked and tall inside the doorway of the room, a darker black shape against the dimness there, and though he could not see its face, Hal knew who it was.
So also did Amanda, for she got up quickly, turning to face the door. "Forgive me, Guildmaster," said Old Man, slipping around the figure to stand in front of it, "but this visitor says he has come a long way to talk privately with Friend." "Yes," said Amid, and the tone of his voice told Hal that he, too, had recognized the newcomer. "I'm afraid we'll have to end the entertainment for the evening. I'd suggest the rest of you leave now." "No reason for me to interrupt things," said the deep, compelling voice of Bleys Ahrens. "I can wait." "No," said Amid. "If everyone else will please leave?"
"I'll stay," said Amanda. "You might like to stay, too, Amid." "I'd prefer to," said Amid. "I have a responsibility to all that happens here." He looked at Hal. "But I don't want to intrude?"
There was a touch of humor in Bleys' voice as he threw back the hood of his cloak and stood, a head and shoulders above everyone standing around him. "Everyone can stay, as far as I'm concerned."
But the Guild members were already moving out of the open door behind the tall man. Only Cee stayed where she was, ignoring Onete's beckoning. Cee's eyes on Bleys did not hold the implacable gaze she had turned on the Occupation forceleader and on Hal, but they held the steady look of a wild animal ready to attack if it was approached. "Stay, Amid," said Hal, setting the guitar aside. "Come in, Bleys. Sit down." "Thank you."
He came over and settled himself in the chair directly opposite. He threw back the rest of his cloak, revealing himself in dark jacket, trousers and shirt, in every way unremarkable except for the personality with which he somehow invested these clothes. Amid was still at his desk.
Amanda had moved back, into the fire-thrown shadows over by the exit door. Standing there, she was nearly invisible to those nearer the flames. "You can come and sit with us, Amanda ap Morgan," said Bleys. "I'm not here to try to do any harm to Hal. He and I know that it'd make no difference to history if either or both of us died. The historical forces are in motion. We're only the aiming point of each side." "Perhaps. Perhaps not," answered Amanda's voice. "I'll stay here, thanks." "It's all right, Amanda," Hal said with his eyes unmoving on Bleys, "I don't think he'd try to kill me, here - even if he could. "Come now," Bleys smiled, "do you think that if I'd come, seriously intending to do away with you, I'd have come at all unless I was sure I could?" "If you were to try," said Amanda, and her voice had a curious, remote sound, almost an echo to it as if she spoke from a far distance, "you'd never leave this room, yourself, Bleys Ahrens." "It's really all right, Amanda," said Hal, still without taking his eyes off the man opposite. "I'm safe." "Perhaps now, if you say so," said Amanda. "Five seconds from now, who knows? I'll stay here."
Bleys shrugged and concentrated on Hal. "Surprised to see me?" he asked. "No," said Hal. "Clearly, the pictures taken by that flyover were studied after all." "Yes. You didn't really expect to leave the Final Encyclopedia for one of the Younger Worlds without my hearing about it eventually, did you?" said Bleys. "You can't shut off all traffic between the Final Encyclopedia and the surface of Old Earth, and no matter how reliable the people making the trip back and forth, information is going to travel with them. Information leaks, and the leakage reaches me, eventually, since we're always watching you there at Old Earth."
Amid got up from his chair and added a fresh couple of split logs to the fire, which flared up more brightly as the new fuel crashed down among the half-burned wood below it. With the gradual addition of other bodies to the room while Hal had been singing, the temperature had risen in the office, and then, when the door had been opened to let nearly all of them out, cooler air outside had swept in. There was a chill about them, now, and to Hal it felt even as if a breath of coldness had reached out to him from the folds of the cloak Bleys had just flung back.
Hal studied this man, leader of those who called themselves the Others, those who now controlled all that mattered of the Younger Worlds through their powers of persuasion - powers so effective as to seem almost supernatural, and which had set the people of those worlds to the task of conquering Earth.
He had met Bleys in person only at rare intervals in his own life, beginning with the time of the murder of his tutors and his own near capture by Bleys and his gunmen. The last time had been more than three years before, when Hal had first gathered nearly all the people of the Dorsai world, and the wealth and knowledge of the two Exotic ones, safely within the phase-shield Hal had caused the Final Encyclopedia's engineers to set up, enclosing and protecting it, and Earth.